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It’s graduation season again, and proud grads and their families are looking forward to caps and gowns and walking across the stage to get their high school or college diplomas.

For those graduating from college, the good news reported last week by USA Today is that the job market is much improved, and full-time rather than part-time jobs are more likely to be waiting for new college graduates.

The bad news is that student debt piled up by young millennials is forcing 20-40 percent of them to delay such things as getting married and starting a family, buying a house and saving for retirement. In fact, 26 percent of young people still in college anticipate moving back in with their parents after graduation to make ends meet.

The total U.S. college student loan debt now stands at $1.4 trillion, or $32,000 per debtor, according to Bloomberg News. That is more than all of Americans’ car loans or credit card debt.

And these loans are about to get more expensive. The federal government is raising the cost of new student loans starting in July, which will likely drive privately issued student loans like Sallie Mae’s higher, too.

New college freshmen and their parents have a wide array of choices for college loans. Federal student loans guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Education have lower interest rates and costs, and more flexible options for repayment, than student loans through private lenders.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has very helpful information on its website explaining the different kinds of student loans, and the requirements and advantages of each. For example, private student loans do not usually have options to reduce or postpone repayment, and can raise rates during the life of the loan.

Although the USA Today survey found that 23 percent of recent college graduates with student debt believe that the education their student loans paid for will never be worth the money owed, they are mistaken. If young people complete college and go to a traditional public or private university, their prospects for future earnings far exceed anyone with only a high school diploma. In a story for The Atlantic last summer, Derek Thompson showed how the cumulative value of additional lifetime earnings averaged $500,000 for college grads and $800,000 for those with graduate school degrees.

Surprisingly, the students most likely to default on their student loans, Thompson showed, are those with small debts of under $5,000 (35 percent) and debts of $5,000 to $10,000 (31 percent).

These small-debt defaulters are often victims of the most cruel version of student loan debt — the for-profit colleges and trade schools that spend more money recruiting students than educating them in the classroom. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets have run stories about young people, often from low-income families, lured by promises of glamorous high-paying jobs and instead saddled with huge debt. Part of the problem is the overall graduation rate for these private for-profit colleges is only 27 percent versus 58 percent for public universities.

A study released in December by the U.S. Department of Education found that 14.6 percent of students at Mississippi post-secondary schools were in default by the end of their third year of scheduled student loan repayment. Mississippi, the study found, has the fourth highest rate of loan default in the U.S. The national default rate is 11.3 percent.

Fueling both the high default rate and the high student loan debt are several factors. The impact of the Great Recession and high unemployment not only sent a lot of young people back to school, it also decreased state revenue that, in turn, increased tuition at state colleges. These costs went up when many families were facing declining incomes themselves, so they had to borrow more.

The increased tuition costs for traditional schools also sent some students to for-profit schools, where they were less likely to get a degree or even enough education to land a good job. Some of those schools were shut down during the Obama administration when they became targets of federal investigations or lawsuits.

Today’s incoming college freshmen can learn from those mistakes. When choosing a school, look at its graduation rate as well as its cost and its programs. Apply for federal loans first, and try to keep expenses low so your ending student debt is as low as possible. Make sure there are jobs available in your field of choice, and work hard to graduate in four years. And remember that a college degree from a reputable school still pays off with a better life in the long run.

Lynn Evans is a former Jackson School Board member and a contributing columnist.